Christianity and afterlife

Greetings and peace be with you Iceee;

In Islam, we forgive. Same with Christianity. We forgive once we repent for our sins.
Only God Can Judge.

We are all created by the same God and repentence is at the heart of the Christian message also.

Blessings

Eric

Greetings and peace be with you truthseeker63;

People need to understand that simply going to church and calling yourself a
Christian doesn't make you any more a Christian than standing on a runway makes
you an airplane!

And I always wanted to be an airplane, now I shall have to stand at Cape Kennedy and become a rocket.

Hi MustafaMC

How does repentence and asking for forgiveness fit in with the Cross and redemption? Wasn't Jesus' death on the cross a redeeming sacrifice that paid the sin debt of mankind? If a debt has been paid by someone else then it wasn't really forgiven, was it?

if a friend has something against you he can not pay your debt, it is only a friend who have forgiven you who can also pay your debt. A friend can forgive you and still not pay your debt as well for many reasons. So forgiveness and debt payment are two things.

1. everyone have an account in heaven. This accounts shows our good deeds and bad ones.
2. every sin is an offense against the Truth (- Jesus); this means every sin participates in hurting and killing Jesus. This gets registered on each person's account. Also by 'debt' we means what must be done to repair the damage done by the sin.
3. On the Cross Jesus forgave those who killed him- that is everyone according to point (2); however, no one is forgiven without specifically asking for it, so this forgiveness was 'banked' on a special account.
4. by rising from the death he repaired all damages done by all sins; however, this is too is done when requested, so while waiting for the asking....it is 'banked'
5. whenever we admit our true sins and repent them truly,( we are 'dealing' with the the Truth - (2) and (3)...), the Mercy which was banked for us is applied to our account, and we are forgiven.
6. last, for every sin, there have to be reparation. Man hurts and kills Truth whenever he sins. However, Truth is not vanquished. Truth rose from death: Jesus rose from death and reparation for everysin was done in him. This too is banked and one day it will be applied to all accounts on which sins were forgiven. we can not fix the damage we caused because it is so great, however, we can participate paying our debts in doing what we can, Jesus does the rest out of his pure generosity...and this is why we also say that we are redeemed, because we do not and can not redeem ourselves.

The priest is like the banker, he fix my accounts the same way a bank representative does, but he is himself not the one who banked salvation for me, but he does perform exchange according to the ID given. Jesus gave them the job to forgive sins this way.


Redemptions means making use of something which is no longer userful.
When a car goes through an accident and gets damaged, we say that it is redeemed if an other use is found for it or its parts.

Man is damaged in many way by sins that he appears useless, so some people decide to simply kill him or he may even think that he can kill himself...perhaps for some 'big' cause so he can 'redeem' (make himself useful in other ways) himself.

When Jesus forgive us and raises us from the death (of sin: first resurrection), he gave us an other purpose. There is a girl who was a prostitute, Jesus saved her and redeemed her, now she helps save other prostitutes from prostitution or prevent girls from finding themsleves in prostitution in the first place. This is redemption. By human standard she should die for all her sins. But by God standard, she was already dead in sins, so God saved her from the death of sin, and gave her a life. Men would solve nothing in killing her (corpse), but God is repairing her damages by restoring her and getting her to testify against hew own former ways.

Salam alaykum

This is not originally islamic text but I believe what is says:

For the love of God is broader
Than the measure of our mind;
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.

But we make His love too narrow
By false limits of our own;
And we magnify His strictness
With a zeal He will not own.

We should be very carefull when we start to think have the Christians afterlife or not (when we are not even absolutely sure if we have). And Allah knows best.

format_quote Originally Posted by MustafaMc

Amigo, what of what you wrote can be referenced to words that Jesus spoke? How does it jive with Matthew 18:23-35?

The connection in on Truth of Jesus redemption journey:
With Jesus suffering, death, and resurrection, there is sin, forgiveness and restoration.
In the story Jesus spoke he wanted to illustrate that. When the lord let the servant go, he did not mean to let him go and continue as before, harsh to his own servants... He meant to let him go as in the sense of restoration: his family was set to be sold, but it was restored to him and he was given a chance to start over again.
but because his heart had not changed, he committed an other sin, and he got punished for it by being delivered to torturers.

So fear of punishment is not enough, without a change of heart, we are still in the realm of sin and punishment.
Fear is the beginning of wisdom, but it is not the end... I think the end is the desire for restoration, desire for a new heart.

It seems that redemption was delivered throug the falling down and begging, but while his family may have received it, the servant blocked hiw own by his wicked heart.

format_quote Originally Posted by Iceee

If a Christian dies right after sinning, they go to heaven, because all sins past, present, AND FUTURE are forgiven when a person believes in Jesus alone for salvation without adding any of their own works.

Once you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, all of your sins are forgiven. This includes sins you have committed, and sins that you will commit. So if you truly accept Christ, you are spending eternity in heaven with God.

However, many Christians think: Okay wow, that means I can sin all I want because I'm going to heaven no matter what. This is a very dangerous way of thinking.

If you have truly accepted Christ, then that person would always try to stay away from sin. If a person just goes oh I'm going to heaven no matter what so I can just do whatever, has that person really accepted Christ?

Yes, Christians sin. But if they have truly accepted Christ, they will try to stop sinning, not just think that they can do whatever they want because they're saved.

Kind of like Islam...

Not at all like Islam.

In Islam, when you convert to Islam, your past sins are forgiven but once you're a Muslim you should abstain from sinning. Sins that don't involve another person are forgiven through repentance and praying but sins that involve the rights of another person are not forgiven until the wrong is corrected. So if a Muslim kills someone deliberately, he will not be forgiven just by repenting. If a muslim steals from another person or takes what's someone else's right, he won't be forgiven until he returns it.

Do not sin with the thought that you'll repent and that will wipe the sins becuase in Surah Al-Nisa it is stated that those sins are forgive which a person does in ignorance.

format_quote Originally Posted by MustafaMc

The passage simply means to me that if we expect forgiveness from God for our multitude of sins, then we should likewise forgive those who injure us. This concept is identical to what is said in the Lord's Prayer.

That's what I said; the servant blocked his own forgiveness. he was not forgiven because he did not forgive. The fact that he did not forgive proves that he was not sincere in his asking for mercy.